Defining Ourselves offers perspectives on black literature in the 1990s by twenty-nine black writers and critics, including Paule Marshall, Amiri Baraka, John A. Williams, Ishmael Reed, Walter Mosley, Marita Golden, Thulani Davis, Jill Nelson, Arthur Flowers, Lorna Goodison, Bebe Moore Campbell, Brent Staples, Terry McMillan, Stanley Crouch, Houston A. Baker Jr., Barbara Christian, Karla FC Holloway, and William W. Cook. The essays in this...